17 h - The Bright Asylum (conclusion to TRH and DARKLIGHT)
by teddybowties
Summary: The Doctor's dream encompasses many lives, and many layers. Whose dream will fade, and whose will rise in the end? MPREG in previous story.
1. prologue

Prologue: The XTC of Gold

Pictures.

The Master wanders down a hall filled with them.

Their gold frames grunt along the walls, tired of being unhung, of lying on bruised corners in the dust of centuries.

"Raise me up!" they seem to sing from the moldy shadows of pedestals, "Put me in my place again!" they cry, to his embattled ears.

He is disused to quiet. To silence. At least, he used to be.

Him.

Koschei of Oakdown, the Time Lord formerly known as Harold Saxon, Prime Minister of Britain. The Master.

"At least the drums are gone," he murmurs softly, inhaling the scent of paint and restorer's glue, "Did you come to bed last night? I can't remember."

His head tilts slowly upward from where it's been gathering his feet; his chin adjusts leftward, rightwise, grinding itself like a sword at the stone in the back of his jaw. Dithering upward, unwilling to be cold, he looks up at the ladder standing in the center of the museum's domed ceiling, and, shows some interest.

"What is that?" he asks, covering his eyes at the bright glint peeking from a dabbed on application of plaster.

"It's nothing, just some old fresco I found; it'll be done soon."

Flamina's voice, fluttering down to him like a butterfly on a high seawind.

"No, I mean, what is that shiny bit? It blinded me, for a moment."

The shadow of her brush pauses along the rungs of the ladder, the thin stick of darkness breaking in half-radials along each step- it reminds him of the opening fan before a red and black dance.

A movement, above, after the brush has retracted, a careful withdrawal, a swipe.

The glint retreats a little, slower to call his attention now, slower to breathe in the light.

Koschei looks up, his hand quivering over his face, in case the glint returns.

Flamina calls down, her voice sudden and coiffured as she answers him. She doesn't see him grab the ladder and start up.

"It's nothing. Something I couldn't save. Just a bit of foil decoration on the ceiling. Faded. I'm covering it over and replacing it from memory. Don't look at it yet till I'm done. I'll let you know when I've-"

He grabs a rung, halfway up. The rough wood is cold, like old windowsills after a long rain. He feels his shoulders quiver a little, and takes another step up, reaching for the next rung. But the glint breaks his focus on the climb, and he stops.

Then his eyes widen, and he looks at the floor.

The clean marble slides like glass under the old wooden ladder, interrupted only by the occasional sweep of air. There is a clear disruption in the entry area from which he came, but the dust layer leading into the hall shows only one pair of shoes.

He looks again toward the high ceiling and his lover, and begins his climb again, opening his eyes on the fresco and her hand poised below the white and the gold.

Her eyes are on him, looming like black stones. They flick to the floor, then to his widening gaze, and relieve themselves a little, turning a bit lavender around the edges as if to make up for something.

Too late, he thinks, applying the back of his mental hand to his mental face.

He feels his skin blanch despite himself, like a colander of overwashed celery.

"Celery? Oh god," he murmurs, creeping his arms around the sides of the ladder poles, leaving himself a wide berth.

Then he is looking up again as he turns himself on the ladder rung to face outward and away. He cranes his neck though, to stare at the gold on the ceiling.

The glint fills his vision, forcing open his iris so softly he barely notices as he leaps from the ladder and cracks a marble tile in a one-foot landing.

His footsteps shatter the silence of another hallway as he runs from the madling white avalanche of a woman's pursuing laughter.

His girlfriend. Ambition.

"Bitch!" he screams, trampling over a bit of pedestal here and there, a stone head, a half-eaten staircase as he throws his voice from every possible direction, creating a smokescreen of sound, "I know a place you can't go, because she's never been there!"

Then he reaches down, feeling his finger for the Rose Ring.

But it's gone.

Perfect.

The seven Mirrors appear before him, summoned by the seven echoes he just created.

Because, after all, he created Them, too.

His woman's footsteps fill the back of him, tromping slowly serial. They march, those footsteps, soft and comforting and red, clip-clop clip-clop, up to the middle of the hallway.

She must have seen the Mirrors, he reasons, as he steps forward into the welcoming arms of the Seven, who gleam like slabs of moonlight to his eyes. He concentrates on the visual- a milky dawn on two-sunned Gallifrey, red grass floating on the hills like clouds of fish. A boy with a rock in his hand. A body. A crying accomplice.

He turns round, his back to Them now. He can see her out the corner of his eye, shifting like white cancer in the half-light of the Dream museum.

There are lavender tears running from the pools of her black eyes, and her lovely arm has grown a wicked shard, much like the piece of glass that stabbed him in the TARDIS console room.

She lurches forward in a lunge through the air, her shard-arm tearing rents in two paintings facing opposite each other across the hall- a wild-eyed woman in a blue dress, and a nervous girl in a blue pant suit with a pin on her lapel.

He touches his eye, and a hot tear sits there, not quite dropping onto his skin as he flings himself backward into the memory, through the Mirrors.

Her mouth makes the words of a song...

"Baby, it's cold outside..."


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One: I Remember Mamlaurea

The little boy wakes up from his bed, eyes puffy from crying in the night. There's hay in his hair- he can feel it dangling and sticking. He reaches up to rub his eyes again, and does so, and cries out in pain without a sound, the echo of his agony clanging against the outer reaches of his empty skull.

Not Academy, they said. Never school, they said. He sticks a grimy foot in a worn slipper and yawns.

One day, he's going to tell people he is too good for yawning. Superior body. Superior brain. Someday there's going to be stuff in his empty head. Too much stuff to waste time crying. So much stuff, he might even forget why. Imagine, forgetting his name one day! Preposterous.

So he gets up, plonks one foot in front of the other and looks for his other slipper under the stuffy bed.

Oh. Wait.

His hand quivers as he reaches for his bedding, slumping there in a pile beside the bed post. Maybe with his foot, he can...

But no. No looking. She said not to, the lady last night. The nice lady under the bed. Oh, that face will give him nightmares. He remembers as he touches his foot. He remembers that she petted him, like a proper mum would have.

So he doesn't look for his other slipper. Instead, he smiles, and waits for the knocking that will signify the only joy he gets out of his day.

Koschei should be by soon.

And he waits.

No knocking.

So he blinks and swears and cracks his neck, because his neck is suddenly cold, and he thinks maybe he should look out of doors for Koschei's knock, in case it was too lazy to come in, like Koschei sometimes is.

He's always telling Koschei to come in the whole way, not just half. But Koschei's father doesn't like him. Says he's stupid and dirty.

But Koschei says his father is stupid and dirty for not liking him.

But the little boy thinks maybe he's just sad. So he cries for him. And he cries for Koschei. And he cries for the people who don't like him. And the people who don't like them. And he cries because he's stupid. And has an empty head.

He should really get back to Koschei's knock, or he'll start it up again, the crying. The nice lady wouldn't like that.

But he thinks she would understand.

Nobody else does. Not even Koschei.

He balls his fist on the bedcover and sniffs a mighty dribble of snot back up into his nose. Quite an accomplishment, at his age.

But none of that matters.

Because Koschei isn't here. He didn't see it.

So the little boy tugs on his old brown coat and ambles to the barn door, cutting himself only twice on a nail hidden in the hay, because his right foot hadn't the benefit of a slipper. He knocks four times, then reaches for the big wooden bar and lets himself out.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: A Summer Place

Her cold white lap is so warm.

The old soldier shifts on his one knee, shoulders reveling in the chill of his wife's alabaster patella coated in thick carved silk.

The echo of his breathing drifts slowly through the mausoleum, striking the walls, the hammer of lazy bells.

There is a pin pinning the corners of her dress to her body, he remembers dreamily, a gold bird with silver feet curling in some questful direction against her left shoulder blade. He will look at it later.

His hands don't feel much anymore, being cold as they are, freezing themselves against her well-turned calves through the carvings of white stone.

There are white ladies outside, at the big doors, their hands poised to close the place forever above mounds of bleached bone carved in the shape of winged creatures- handles that lock, to shut out the crowds.

Soon he will be alone with her for good.

He can feel the breeze as the blank-faced servant girls at the doors push them forward, toward themselves.

He sees the shadow as it skitters past the feet of the two cold beauties as they draw closed the doors, scuttling like a black crab across the floor, but with soft toes, soft everything, for how can a shadow make a sound, or leave smears of golden paint in lieu of footprints? The soldier sighs wearily, 'Later, later'. He has never been a superstitious man. The lie will not echo, with the doors closed.

As it crawls up the plaque at her feet, where the soldier's own naked digits are turning dead white now, leaden and stoned, the blip, the blur, the blot of darkness, bothers to read the bright metal plate inscribed with the soldier's love in little smooth curls, then melts into the mixture of soldier's shadow and statue's shade, leaving blotches of gold:

THE ACCOLADE


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Blue Shift

"Doctor this is very far from Wonderland!" Clara calls, as the fall steals her breath and the walls of the SHARDIS's gullet make for interesting dinner theatre, surrounding her on all sides with paintings of a running woman in blue whose dark eyes seem to follow her descent in a spiral of nauseous unprivacy.

Her skin feels hot as she plummets; her hands grapple with the heat of being swallowed by a giant woman-shaped ship with abandonment issues and stalkerish tendencies.

She contemplates the bottom, imagining it to be a lively affair of grating and acid and crunching and placid deniability coated in white goo.

Gravity, however... well it has other ideas.

Clara's bum strikes heavy on a pile of books, slightly singed and recently; she can tell from the smell of charcoal rising from them. Not to mention the sordid affair of their crispy black pages. The covers are blank, giving no more of their names when she picks them up then a pile of ashes would of its former shape. Her fingers rub her backend, patting away as she scrambles up and onto her stockinged feet again. Black stockings, red dress.

She sighs.

"At least it isn't Trenzalore!"

A buzzing sound ingratiates itself, building and building until she can hear it in her ears instead of merely close by.

Her dark eyes flip back and forth, trailing imaginary shadows in the candlelight splaying on the walls like the consulting posters of some forgotten medical experiment.

"Is anyone there?" she calls, careful to be exactly loud enough to catch the attention of every would-be accosting presence in the place.

Thick sweat suddenly collects at her hairline, and as she reaches up to touch herself like a good little narcissist, she follows her shoeless feet into a winding hall, dotted with more candles.

Books squeeze from alcoves here and there, but the center of the room is the vibrant concern.

It is round, a circular atrium, for its walls are high and its ceiling is endless, painted with black marks and remains of painted birds. And in the center of the center, in a slight indentation, there sits a gilded cage, highboy and perched on a barley curled rod-stand. The rod sticks from the floor below, and there is a body-wide hole around the cage into which anybody might fall, given enough incentive.

What is down there is dark, and that is all she can see.

But inside the cage, oh!

There is a blue bird, full of feathers and fire. There are ashes in the cage, beneath its long cherry red feet. Long feathers, blue fire, gray eyes slid shut against everything. The bird is sleeping.

"You're..." Clara begins, reaching out with a half-closed hand toward the cage.

Then her foot brushes something hard and cold. She looks down, reading quickly as the old plaque tumbles into the darkness of the cage's pit.

"...rare blue phoenix- caution, do not approach!" Clara reads from memory, cringing mid breath as the sign clangs somewhere down below, eliciting a thick shuffle from the cage.

Clara turns up her face to the slight breeze drowning out the candlelight behind her, the wax maidens blinking out in their coves, squelching their autumnal fires one by flickering one.

Slowly, considerate of the need to keep her face intact against all odds, Clara looks then up to the bird in the cage, the blue lady, the feathered festive feral fenix, the patchwork peacock dressed in bright water, and cranes her neck to gloat.

"Is that you in there? Well, it's been a long time comin', this! Don't think I'm gonna let you off easy once you're out of there! But first, I need to find a..."

Clara's eyes scrunch. Her mouth makes a dainty 'o'. She withdraws her pen again, picking apart the pieces, ink holder, tip, little pointy thing that grabs onto your shirt. She holds them out for a bit of flame, timing it so the sleeping blue majestic bird obliges unwittingly, transforming the unhinged pen into a dripping piedy poker.

Clara nods her head, moves to stand at the edge of the hole, and sticks her hand out with the poker in, hoping to catch the latch on the blue bird's cage.

She reaches, careful now, one foot levered on a pile of books long stuck to the floor with dust and wax, the other balancing on the edge. Her fingers stretch out, the pen-poker poised between her pale knuckles, peeking from her fingertips out toward the languishing latch.

A key in her pocket wiggles free and flies downward into darkness, the silence shocking her ears as she flirts wide-eyed with the bottomless reservoir of black beneath her stretched out shape. Just a little more, she reasons, listening for the telltale click of the latch with half-shucked coconut eyes.

Then her shoe slithers off her foot, and goes to join the key. The pitch jolts her forward, shoving the piedy pen-poker into the catch on the latch on the golden cage.

She twists, her eyes scrabbling wildly for the gilt bars of the cage, spinning round, frantically memorizing every little piece of the scenery, the candles in their alcoves, the sloping green wonders of the pillowed dome above her head, the charred and wax-covered volumes padding the walkway in like layers of stomach lining.

A flash of blue fire engulfs the space above her paling cheeks and knocks her off her balance. As she falls she notes, with some detachment, the clanging of the open cage door against the bars- and not a brown hair singed. Pretty good for a school teacher.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter Four: The Ship Who Rang

Flashback.

The TARDIS looks out across the odd white sea, remembering her brief and stolen voice.

Her blue gloves ache for the frame of a different ship, but the white liquid pirates hurry her along.

Her feet rush the gangplank against her wishes.

The wind is cold, tossing ice in her hair which frosts in little drops of diamond. Steady against the rails, she skims along with her feet, her fingers clutching her naked throat. She pulls herself along, bent under the duress of expectation- a long voyage is coming.

it is imminent.

It is here.

But in her boots and in her bones, reason dwells on a knife's edge.

And on that edge, she dances.

The sea wind cannot touch her.

Cannot burn her.

One message, before they set sail.

It's all she has time for.

Inside Reason, she imagines an old wall phone, and picks up the receiver. To the pirates, it is merely a conch shell, produced from a pocket. A pocket of time, that is.

She lifts one finger from her throat, enough to let the blood start draining down.

As the bubbling white pirates run toward her, their hands clawing the air, she lets the red liquid run into the head of the phone, dripping into the hole.

Her neck shoves open, revealing the hard, white tip of something, curved, flat on the end. Striated.

A hoof.

The hands of the pirates reach her, but the unicorn slips away with her blood, flowing along with it into the phone lines.

Out of the Dream, and the conch turns pink in her hands as the ship slips out of port, onto the white sea.

He will understand.

Her body, in blue dress and blue hat and blue boots, drops to the deck with a splatter and a thud.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter Five: An Example of Minimalist Instruction

Flashback.

Borusa groans; her shoulder hit the ground of the Dream with maximum impact. She imagines it broken, then stops herself before the pain tries to infuse her arm with little distracting cracks. She rolls off that shoulder, stands up. Brushes off. Then she rolls both shoulders and inhales through her dainty little nose, then out through her pouty childish mouth. She cracks her neck left, right.

"Well, dealing with Rassilon wasn't too hard," she says aloud, swallowing as she recalls the rancid smell of the Valeshard, a mixture of dead body and moldy towels, "at least you're still…"

Her eyes stop moving before her mouth does, but even still, she doesn't bother finishing the sentence.

The crystals are gone. The overgrowth-strewn lab is gone.

In their place is a grey floor, spotted and stained with old scars of paint and nameless dark splotches.

She scans the floor, the walls, columns, all the same. Dim lights. An empty lot with regular markings denoting cordoned spaces. A bunch of lines around a hole, really. Rather a bit Yijing.

"Must be some kind of vehicular port," she mutters, as her eyes find a strange pink object some distance away, near the center of the lonely, ambling room, "Rassilon might find me if I stay too long. Although, I don't think he's in the building right now, judging by the color scheme."

She walks toward the object poking from the grey old floor, coming close enough now to see its shape.

A long pink rod, topped by a… heart-shaped royal crown set on a golden bow.

"Honestly, boy," she grumble-huffs as she sprints the last few steps and takes the strange rod in her hand, "I knew you were into cross-dressing but this is ridiculous."

A piece of paper flutters off as she lifts it. She rips it from the air and reads,

"For a Good Time, Twirl."

Her resultant glare scrapes the rest of the paint off the opposite wall.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter Six: The Bezoar

Jennifer's Dream.

She wakes to wood splinters jutting over her head.

She tries to feel the others, but the call of the unity of the Flesh is lost in the din from some dark place just in front of her. Crying out, she breaks upward, clawing the moldy wet splinters of wood away from her face.

Her body is square, formed in the shape of…

A box.

She climbs out, reaching with the fearsome strength she found inside the Factory, scraping and grasping and clawing with great white limbs and long nightmare fingers.

There is a man she recognizes in the mist beyond her vision.

A man with a curl of rabbit hair obscuring half his face. A man pretending to be an idiot half-trying to be kind.

"You wear that mask like you made it," she whispers, as a stalactite falls from the ceiling.

So they are both in the cave, then.

The man does not answer, only holds out a hand like chicken legs and grabs at her wrist.

She feels his fingers clutch around her liquid bones.

He tugs her along after him, coat flying out in a scholarly portent of tweed and suspenders.

A piece of her breaks free, spilling away from her shoulder in little taffy pulls.

The lake rises up before her again, beckoning, from her memory.

Her feet are small again.

She can feel the warmth of her little red boots.

"Help me, somebody! Help me?" her youngest voice cries out to him.

There are tears welling in his pale green eyes as he holds her close to him, plasters a kiss against her frosted hair, then shoves her head under the icy water.

Her eyes slide shut on a single thought.

"It's so warm here… so warm…"

Above the ice, the nauseous wet glomp of someone throwing up fails to reach her ears, but she hears it anyway.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: Lord Peter Views the Bobby

The Doctor feels his lips turn away from his mouth in that bad way they have again, as more gold pours from between his teeth. (It reminds him of Glamour, really, only without the…) His stomach is rebelling too, judging by the nasty little arrangement they have with his lips. And his throat. In fact it feels as though everything is peeling off him, one annoying nuclei at a time.

His skin goes first, shedding outward like a banana at a Roman bath. His toes curl with the force of it, and his nerves shake in their sheaths of fat, imagining they're next. His bones curve like hot cakes after syrup, leaning into the golden glow of newness melting the snow beneath his prostrate body in indulgent rivulets.

It all ends eventually.

Soon, the glow withdraws like the dusk sun of so many Earth-like planets, leaving him cold and unclothed.

"Huh. You weren't this quick when Rory and I were around, Doctor."

Pond? Pond. Pond!

His bleary eyes clear with a bit of a rub, and he finds himself standing again, having a staring match with a red headed woman who once made a serious claim on the family fortune.

Her body is just as he remembers it, soft thin curves, long red hair, black skirt, checkers. Police hat. Baton. White shirt. Two legs like blessed chopsticks, finely turned and elegant. Off-limits. Mother-In-Law. Little girl with big dreams.

Amy.

"Amy," he breathes, running his hands along his naked body, surprised to find himself naked in front of an old friend, "… what brings you to this neck of the woods?"

"Spoilers!" she laughs with that downturned pout of hers, tossing her vivacious red locks so that they flow against one police vest-covered breast, "You never could handle the truth! Just take this and don't drop it on anyone's head. I found it on the bottom! Later!"

She sticks her long, thin, articulate hand in a vest pocket and curves her fingers round something… which she tosses toward him from where she floats like a wet witch over the middle of the iced over lake. Then she blows away in the penetrating wind.

The Doctor strains to see the object, and leans forward a bit, jolting his ankles into belated action.

He falls flat, his new chin digging into the impaling frost with a black and blue vengeance.

Forcing one hand to scramble out from underneath his ribs, he crawls his fingers through the snow until he finds it.

It burns gold and demure in the snow, blinking away the ice crystals like a little lamp.

His cold hands wrap around it, tiny, inviting.

He looks down as his hands drag the small object close to him, cupping the light to shield it.

"Ahhh…" he murmurs, humbled. "I should have known."


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: Metropolis Now

Flashback.

"Ah, the striking heights of striped towers! The harrowing pilasters!"

Rassilon waves his arms at the ruins around him, striking a nonchalant pose with his chin up, mental hands in pockets and feet well planted in the dust curtaining the viewing platform. He spins round one more time, then slowly takes a breath of cold air in through his nose, relishing the frost that springs up to cover his nares. His eyes go to her.

Cossie.

His wife.

Her bones he perched beautifully in the stone chair set in this place, the eldest of the Pythia's temples on Gallifrey.

"Did you know, my lovely one, that only three men living know the location of this temple of ours?" he murmurs, adding a sultry tone in with all the others as he sweeps his hand toward a white slab on which several objects rest, "… and they will be coming soon."

A silver clawfoot tub sits beside the table, large as half the table itself. Inside the tub's sharply gleaming bowl, there sits a pool of Flesh, with bits of fingers sticking out, and two young eyes that poke and peer from the top film like ghoulish gems.

He selects one object, a red Prydonian cloak full of little points of golden light. He holds it up for his wife to see, then drops it into the silver tub and says, "Into the SHARDIS with the first of my offerings! And here… Protection from the eyes of Death."

He picks up the next, a white marble pyramid the size of his head, holding it out and away from him as he calls out its name to her as he drops it into the tub, "A Sacrifice to ensure the spring."

The third object is a black and white egg half as large as the pyramid, with little etchings like circuitry running over its surface.

"This Rule-Encrusted Egg," he says, hovering a hand over the egg to indicate it, "… recalls one's Duty to the future." He drops it in, and it makes a small well in the Flesh as it disappears.

He moves down the slab-table, counting until he reaches the fourth object, the Rose, and reaches for it, his shoulders quaking softly.

"Stolen love- the spoil of war," he breathes, picking up the heavy wet bloom, whose petals gleam in shades of jeweled rainbow: blue sky, molten gold, purple dusk, red blood, orange dawn, emerald eyes and dark water. His fingers empty, and the Rose falls in.

Rassilon moves his hands to the next object on the slab-table, a pair of golden rings carved with raised roses. He picks them up, holds them in his hands, rolls them between his fingers. Then he shows them to her, letting the gold glint off those parts of her stained dark sockets that still retain some shine and aren't hanging with her ancient meat.

"Companionship…" he remembers aloud as he drops the Rose Rings into the bubbling tub, "The Other made these Rose Rings you know… I always meant to torture the means out of him, but well… events followed another path that day, did they not? He stole what was mine. Caused you to suffer."

Rassilon touches the skeleton's dried up cheek, caresses a remnant of small chin, pats the fragile kneecap then draws back behind the table and pulls something up from the dark there, a silver slab bent in a number of places.

"Now this… he was keeping this in the deeps, away from me behind a string of teleports. It leads to his old study, I imagine. And what better means of surveying the landscape of the Self then a sentient Mirror? Such a vain man, the Other... and vanity is a weakness that must be kept in check. These baubles have absorbed his psychic energies, Cossie- the tincture I shall make with them will provide you with the breath to dance again!"

He sets the Mirror to the edge of the silver tub and slides it in, watching as it sinks.

"Now there is only one left, dear- the Violin. The instrument of Creation. I will play it for you now, and we shall watch my brew consume the vibrations of its song and complete itself."

His fingers glide over the bow of the Violin, bringing a tiny bit of noise to the windy pedestals and crumbled stones, summoning a shadow of doom over the hidden temple of the last Pythia. Then he sets the Kaku Inko to his chin, nestles it, and begins to play.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: Whistler's Mother

Clara's eyes blink open on the familiar feeling of wax crusting one's eyelids. Well, familiar if your name is Clara Oswald and you've recently recalled a prior incident in which you were dipped in red goo then set under a cloche and adored like a macabre candy statue in a Willy Wonka-themed Victorian rocket facility.

She moves her eyes, a bit here, a bit there, trying to shake her eyelids free enough to see.

She tests her fingers by trying to curl them- yep, still encased in stuff.

At least her toes are wiggle-able in her shoes…

A sound draws her though, out and to the left.

She looks up, suddenly noticing the facts of the environment; she's in a living room- that much she can see inside her waxy prison. She peers downward, straining her eyeballs against the thick wax.

She sees her body, seated in a rocking chair. There are wrinkles on her fingers, sorry, the wax covering her fingers, she mentally edits. There are lacy things, bits of neck-corner and sleeve and womanly articles. The dress on the figure she's trapped in is black and long, reaching to her feet. There appears to be a… she cranes her eyes till they hurt, and manages a glimpse of her reflection in the gleam of a sword hanging above an austere mantelpiece… yes!

It's the figure of an old woman in a bonnet, grandmotherly type. You know, she thinks… stiff… unyielding… somebody her current Doctor could have been if he'd had certain endowments…

And what's that across the room, on a little round clawfoot table? Why, it's a…

"Pmm!" she murmurs, fighting to get her tongue to move behind the thick layers of wax.

"Pmm!"

As she watches, the bit of gingham set over the object on the table slips off, and a break appears in the revealed pie, pushing upward like a seedling.

What pops up from the pie is a little hand, wrapped around a pink wand decorated with a big heart in the middle and topped with a pillowed crown.

"Mm! Nw uv see nebprethng…" Clara mutters through the wax, "Hey! Canyu srtch my noz?"


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: Thumb Pudding

Borusa watches with disdain as her hand, the one she's holding the Wand with, sticks in what feels like thick pie dough, and raises her up until her feet dangle over the now-filling drain in the floor.

"This is wildly inappropriate, Doctor!" she bellows with her little lungs, wishing for no small instant that she'd regenerated into a giant catshark instead of a tiny child. The water rushing beneath her reminds her drearily in vibrant echoes that slam against the walls as they fly up from the drain formerly blocked by the Heart Wand. She looks up at her stuck hand and mutters aloud, "I refuse to accept that my fate is to be stuck in the Land of Fiction, hanging from the top layer of a poorly mixed pastry crust!"

So she snaps the fingers of her free hand in the air and an open window forms, drawing itself in charcoals and soft greys on front of her. With that free hand, she undoes the latch and sticks her head in. At least she'll be able to spy on Rassilon, leave a useful note for the stupid boy if she doesn't make it out of this ridiculous reality.

There is a peek to be had from the window, as her eyes now glimpse a stunning and terrible figure through the dimensional gate she just summoned with skills honed fine over centuries of teaching drooling pupils.

"Rassilon!" she breathes, staring as Rassilon glances over at a skeleton in a strangely familiar throne. Looking down, she can see a tub filled with Flesh. Does she dare?

Suddenly the water feels closer, kissing her ankles.

She lets go of the Heart Wand, and tumbles into the window, sinking quickly into the Flesh. What better vantage point for a spy than inside the infernal machine?


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven: The Hero with a Thousand Facebooks

Jack Harkness reaches for another drawer in the morgue.

Grey handle, grey metal storage drawer.

"You awake little brother? This one's hotter than the last one!"

Grey Harkness groans and smacks his forehead.

"Why are you always like this? We are trapped in a morgue! With dead people! It's like being on Boeshane, only with other people! What are you…"

Jack waves his brother off, his free hand wrapping around a dead man's wrist.

"This one looks promising. I wonder if he lost his wife… his clothes sound like he did."

Jack pats the man's hair and sighs, then sticks the hand back in the pocket he found it in.

"Somebody's got a twisted sense of humor, locking us in here."

"It's a Dream, Grey- I'll find a way out. I promise."

Jack cringes; he didn't catch himself.

Grey kicks a drawer and frowns.

"I remember the last time you said you'd protect me."

Jack looks up from the floor, where he's crouching eye level with another corpse, another man, big chin, bowtie, flop of hair.

"Nice ass... too bad. It looks familiar."

Grey takes off his shoe and throws it at the door.

"Did you not see the locked door? We're trapped in here! Just sit and wait. I'm sure whoever did this will…"

"Grey, it's. A. Dream. I've been here before. Just… follow my lead, okay? WE can do this together if you'd just…"

Jack reaches for another drawer.

"Jack, did you hear that?"

Jack balls his fist and smacks it to his forehead.

"Look Grey, if you keep interrupting me we are never going to get out of this damn hole! Now stop pestering me and…"

"Jack, I hear water! Check that one over there! I think it came from that one!"

Grey points to a storage drawer in the lower right corner.

"…All right. Haven't checked that one yet, so I'll take a look, okay? Maybe there's a live one in there."

Jack goes to the drawer and pulls.

A pile of plastic falls out on top of him, knocking him to the ground.

The drawer slips all the way open and stays there, sticking with a rusty squeak.

"Jaaaack!"

Jack pulls himself out from the pile of white plastic as it begins to self-inflate, growing a horn and a tail… and… odd little hooves that stick out at the four corners.

"Oh my god, that is just… what the hell? A unicorn kiddy boat?"

"Jack! The drawers?"

Behind them, a high metallic rattle obscures a deeper sound, quite suddenly- a low, humming rumble that feels like it's coming closer. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang…

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Rattle.

Drip.

Drip.

Jack makes an 'o' with his mouth and stares at Grey. Grey stares back at Jack and then down at the inflatable kiddy boat.

Their eyes claw backward to the drawers, however, as the thickening drip starts hitting the floor behind them with a little more alacrity.

"That smells like… pie filling? Mm, cherry!" Jack says, grinning as he grabs his brother firmly and jumps into the boat, just as the storage drawers fling open and let loose a monstrous wave of shiny, tart red roux.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: Time Lord of the Pies

Clara's eyes flick again to the pie, for the hundredth time.

"Are you in there, pie person?" she manages, having finally bitten off some of the wax over her mouth.

A noise from the kitchen interrupts her, though, and she freezes. Or rather her tongue freezes, as she waits for what must be an intruder to come in and…

Bang-shuk!

Fwipfwip.

Fwipfwip.

Clara waits, shivering in her coat of cold cold wax.

Fwipfwip.

Fwipfwip.

Two young feet in a moon-themed light blue jimjam follow two knees and two hands and a familiar face into her living room. Yes, her living room. It's hers. She's claimed it.

'This is my living room!" she cries out, wiggling the wax figure for emphasis, "What are you doing in here in your jimjams? Did you get lonely again?"

"No," the boy answers, sniffing a drop of snot back up into his nose. "I just smelled the pie. Oo and what's that then?"

He runs to the Wand and takes it, swinging it around like a sword.

Swish! Swish!

"Ahhh!"

The Heart Wand suddenly beams a jet of little hearts at Clara, and her wax starts to melt.

The boy jumps back, with another mistimed 'Ahhh', grabs the pie with a grin and runs into the kitchen.

Clara stumbles over the chair, but manages to crawl out of the last of the wax and scramble awkwardly toward the kitchen, just in time to hear the boy say, "Not your living room! Bye!"

Pie-foot has disappeared, when she gets there. But there are tracks, telling tracks in sticky thick red.

Hence the name, Pie-foot.

"Pie-foot! Wait, you! Doctor!"

But he is nowhere to be seen. Not in the cupboards, she checks with dismay, rattling them a bit. Not under the table- she knows because she hit her head there a minute ago. But oh what's that, over in the corner?

A big… black… pot.

The footprints lead up to it.

Clara crawls her way to the big cookpot and looks inside. A single sticky handprint, in glorious cherry flavor.

As she gets back up again, she notices the small kitchen window, just a little square on the Eastern side of the house, is pushed inward, toward her.

Must have been how you got in here, my little mouse!" she calls, slumping on the only chair for a breather, "I'll leave it for the next one!"


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: Nohbdy

"Whooooooo!"

"Is that you, Moron?"

The Master calls out to the Doctor again, not expecting an answer as he picks up a stick and tosses it into the stretch of red grass thinning into the woodland behind the barn.

"You'd think I would be used to this by now. I'm going to catch you. Stupid."

The whistle comes again.

"Whooooooo!"

The Master huffs, rolls his shoulders, and steps into the woods.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen: ISON Me

"Grey, look!" Jack cries out, slapping his brother on the shoulder, which tosses the wee kiddy boat with its little white horn back and forth, "… it looks like there's land!"

Grey Harkness looks, and a jagged belt of sea-beaten rocks and wind-bitten beaches rises up before him, close to the horizon… at about four of the clock.

"I see what you mean, Grey," Jack says, cocking his head at his brother sitting on the other side of the kiddy boat, "but how are we gonna get this thing by those teeth?"

Jack smiles and roughs his brother's hair.

"Oh, I have my ways… I'll just pretend it's the Doctor's'… hey, what's that farther inland?"

Grey stares ahead where his brother is pointing, following the line of Jack's hand to the edge of a clear beach and up a brushy flat to find…

"That's… that's a big pointy object, Grey! Do you know what this means?"

"Not really, big brother- I'm more concerned with the shore."

"What?"

"Jack, look to your..."

The kiddy boat's neck and head shove backward, knocking Grey out of the boat. Jack looks down to see a large sandbar, then steps over the side.

"Glurg!" Grey spits sand out of his mouth onto the beach.

Jack grabs Grey's shoulders and blows in his face, clearing bits of sand.

"…there. Better, little brother?"

But Grey's eyes are focused inland.

"Grey?" Jack asks, "what happened to the shoals?"

Grey stumbles off the sandbar and into the shallow water, toward shore.

"They did."

Jack follows Grey through the shallows and up onto a stretch of pale beach, where several figures with large golden spheres in place of heads wait, kneeling forward on their hands in supplication to the sky.

A humming sound emanates from the gold-headed crowd as Jack and Grey walk nearer. Overhead, an unseen shadow plays sharply behind the high clouds.

"I count forty-two of them, Jack," Grey says, looking back at the way they came through the disappearing shoals, "Hey, the shoals are back!"

"I know," Jack says, jerking a thumb at the pyramid, eyes twinkling, "I think they hummed them away for us. Neat, huh? They're called—"

"Geldoracht, I know, I know! But why are they here?"

"We're dreaming."

"I gathered that. But, what are they gonna do to us? Are they gonna hum 'us' away next?"

Grey rubs his hands together behind his back, shifting his weight to his right foot, settling his shoulders for a second time.

"Is it just me or are they getting up?"

The fields of Geldoracht raise their arms to the sky and hold there, fixed in veneration.

Jack's eyes narrow, and he follows the path of those arms into the cloud cover glowing over the horizon.

A small shadow flickers past the top cloud layer, coming faster down into the atmosphere.

"Is that…" Grey breathes, fascinated.

"I think it is…" Jack answers, grinning as he stares up at the approaching object.

The shadow falls closer, and they can see the outline of a small shape, male, head hurtling toward the ground, gangly elbows wrapped around a fat white rooster.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen: The Golden Land

The sound of knees dropping to soft soil rings in Jack's ears suddenly, and he turns around to watch a cascade of gold heads dropping to the ground and knocking against the sand. Bits of golden shell fly out from the broken balls, and a flood of golden gleam spills out, clinking, a tiny sea of thick metal disks.

"What the hell is that? Did they just die? Their heads just fractured on the sand and spilled out coins like those little candy eggs!" Grey whimpers, scrubbing his hair and dropping to his knees as well, his fingers scrabbling in the coins.

"They did. I think I know that kid. Gonna try to catch him."

Jack spins and runs backward for a moment, tripping over some coins as he skids along the sand and lands on his butt a few times, dragging himself across the hard-to sprint landscape toward the falling shadow of the boy.

The child shoots down at an angle, just before Jack reaches the main pile of coins spewed by the Geldorachts' broken heads, pitching a splash of coins out over their kneeling bodies and clocking his brains.

He looks around at Grey briefly, who is rubbing his temple with one hand while scooping up gold in the other.

"Doctor? Is that you?" Jack calls, pushing avalanches of tumbling coins out of the way as he scrambles up the pile.

"Mmm…" the child groans and sits up, his eyes flashing around here and there.

A choking sound issues from his left, just as Jack reaches him and props him against one arm.

The boy coughs once, and oozes out of Jack's grasp, his head bobbing left and right for the source of the noise. He sinks back eventually, and with a sigh, turns around, satisfied that the sound will not come again.

"Fei!" he cries softly, launching himself into Jack's chest, "I've killed Fei!"


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

"Wait, Doctor, get up- I see a leg over there!" Jack laughs and points.

"Really?" the child-Doctor sniffs, and starts digging around in the pile of coins, tossing coins this way and that with the flats of his palms.

In time, a yellow leg pokes up from the gold, two long chicken toes twitching slightly.

The child-Doctor wraps his fingers around the leg and pulls, dragging his fat avian friend out of the coin pile. He shakes the chicken off, then envelops the bird with both arms, squeezing at intervals.

Bleck bleck buh-GAWK!

A single coin sails at a sharp arc from the chicken's bruised throat; the child-Doctor catches it in his hand, then turns it over, letting it catch the light.

"Hah! Now this is what I've been looking for! Funny how that works…" he murmurs.

Then he hugs the chicken once, pets its head, and hands it to Jack.

"I'm off to see the gizzard!" he cries, then leaps off the coin pile, running for the pyramid.


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen: The Hero of Lime

"Let's see now…" the child Doctor says, knocking on the slab of rock separating him from the entrance to the pyramid, "… I know there's a trick to this somewhere…"

He remembers the present from Amy, quite suddenly, and takes it from his pocket.

"Ha!" he yells, fitting the golden object into a conspicuous hole just inside the thick stone door, "How's that for Easy buttons?"

The head of the gold key shines in the light as it turns, twisting into the door's ancient locking mechanism, fitting itself to the clicks and whirs in the carved stone.

The big slab door slides recesses with a puff of dust, and he hops inside.

"Are there zombies?" he calls, hopeful.

The echo from his young voice bounces down a low, narrow hall- a definite possibly-maybe, and he decides to turn just once, to investigate the out-sliding door, having no desire to be shut in with whatever shades might lurk in the depths of the tomb.

"Time to get serious," he supposes aloud, rubbing his hands together to generate some friction. Then he blows on his hands, directing the air to the nearest of the torches dotting the cobwebbed walls.

The torchieres burst up with the light of flame, lighting a child-sized path down into the wall and slightly to the right; typical ventilation chamber. To the right, the obviously sealed main doorway- no hope budging that one.

"Baghdad Battery, indeed," he murmurs, smiling as he touches his hand to the rough wall and continues on down the row of lit torches, "You can't beat chaos when the marshmallows need roasting. Although, at the expense of dessert, it's never wise to poke the bear… unless that bear is the Master, and that's a whole other zoo… oh, and look at the time!"


	19. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen: Pyramid Scheme

"What light, through yonder window… nevermind…" the child-Doctor breathes in the face of the mask covering Rassilon's tomb, "you always did overrate yourself with the ladies, or was that me?"

He puts the key back in his pocket, and brings out the coin. Rubbing the gold between his fingers, he starts to flip it. Once, twice, three tosses.

The lid of the tomb slides off in a cloud of dust; a shriveled hand crawls out, gripping the edge of the big stone coffin.

"Bela Lugosi would be proud, 'Rasse", the child-Doctor says, his voice nursing a growing tremor as the mummy of Rassilon's ambition climbs its wrappy, wrinkled way out of the stone sarcophagus.

"Open wide for clunky!" he cries, and shoves the coin into the gaping, rotten mouth, then shakes his hand as if he's dipped it in rubbish. Which he has. Just look at those green teeth!

Then he steps back, sweeps a flourish to the floor back the way he'd come, and watches the dead thing shamble toward him.

"This would have been so much easier if you'd just watched Blazing Saddles…" he murmurs as the mummy follows him back up the shaft, scraping and scratching and generally making an audible nuisance of itself.


	20. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen: Otherstide

From the pile of coins, Jack watches the great slab door of the pyramid open back up again.

The child-Doctor backs himself out slowly, wiggling something gold and small in his fingers. The coin perhaps?

"Hey, Doc, what…"

Jack chokes as the mummy comes shambling out, trailing bandages and bringing with it the wonderful unique stench of really old socks and eau de musty tomb.

"Doc, is that what I think it is?"

The child-Doctor grins, but doesn't take his eyes off the mummy's gaze as he answers, his feet sure and careful behind him as he backs away to the right of the contracting stone door and sidesteps along the edge of the pyramid, heading toward the water like some kind of deficient ninja.

"Hey there, Jack! Look what I found! I'm leading it to the beach."

"I'm pretty sure it can hear you, Doctor…" Jack calls, shaking his head as he elbows Grey, whose pockets are bulging with coins.

"Shhh! Don't let on! It might hear you!" the child-Doctor calls, seeming to forget the mummy entirely as he leaves the line of the pyramid and heads for a bit of dark rock jutting from the sandy soil edging into the water.

His foot touches the sand, and a strange thing happens.

His body wavers, as though a film has been placed over some unseen camera and heated to an untenable degree. Jack has to look away at his brother, who is playing with the coins in his pockets.

When Jack looks back again, the Doctor is a bald man in kohl makeup, crow-like, naked save for a waist-robe of white fabric. He meets Jack's eyes for a moment, then continues leading the mummy onto the beach.

But Grey tugs on his brother's coat, shoving his fingers out at the water. The SHARDIS stands shin deep in the flesh sea, her huge and terrible gaze turning slowly toward the Doctor.


	21. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty: The Colossus of Bruges

It's the creaking they hear first.

Criiiiick-kik-kik.

Criiiick-kik-kik.

The crick crick crick of the SHARDIS' great head fastening on their location like a laser guided missile. Her giant shoulders turn with her face, a terrible clockworks. Her perfect hips, her inanimate torso, her fixed white breasts- none of her jostles with the weight of real flesh- none of her bears an ounce of the give of reality as she maneuvers her huge false musculature toward the Doctor on the shore.

Her fingers shake with rage at her sides; she trembles it out in waves of Flesh that coil toward the edge of beach where the mummy of Rassilon's ambition slowly ambles toward the water behind the Time Lord's beckoning hands.

Then she raises an arm, lifting one open palm in the direction of the pyramid. Flesh oozes from her feet, up from the watery depths, overtaking the sea.

A tsunami of the white stuff forms like deadly flotsam from the foam, rising and rising and…


	22. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One: Kirschwasser

On the opposite shore, Jennifer takes a handful of sand into her palm, to feel the tiny grains bumping in her hand.

"I have to help them…" the words surprise her mouth with their force, and she tumbles back onto the sand.

Her fingers dig into the white grains, grabbing desperately as she stretches one hand out toward the building great wave… and exerts her own control over the escalating Flesh.

Her fingers cling to empty air, clutching as though trying to draw blood from a stone, or whey from a cheese, squeezing so tightly that the space between them sucks itself in.

Slowly slowly, the great wave begins to bend toward her, taking the form of an acrobatic leaf, grandly arcing in the immediate distance.

There is nothing but her, the horizon line, and the towering beast of white Flesh that she once wielded freely.

Jennifer laughs, her hair blowing back and across her and everywhere as she rises to her feet again and walks closer to the water.

"He helped me die!" she cries happily, shoving her outstretched arm toward the SHARDIS, pulling the wave back toward the un-TARDIS with the force of the sea itself.

But then the SHARDIS reaches back her great arm, and the Flesh towers over Jennifer so quickly.

The world dissolves in white, like that day at the shore, in a shower of red boots. And she smiles.


	23. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two: Riled ARMS

The SHARDIS' lips move; a shrill scream issues from the virgin teeth.

She sweeps her back-reaching arm in a rounding wave of motion toward the beach where the mummy stands hovering at the ocean's edge, but her toes curl restless, digging into the sea bed.

She utters a word, and it bangs across the sky like clapping thunder.

"OTHER."

The SHARDIS moans the word again, thumping her displeasure into the ocean, causing microbursts to shiver the surface of the sea.

"OTHER."

But the third time her lips try the word, a niggle chokes her, and she raises her arms to her throat, clawing in surprise as that niggle becomes an itch, and the itch becomes a burn.

Blue fire erupts from under her chin, blowing out the delicate line of her jaw along with half her face in a spray of chunks and powder from the half-baked Flesh.

Streaks of blue fire like the wings of a giant bird escape the damage, two unfolding ribbons of blue silk tracing across the sky in either direction from the ruined porcelain face.

The SHARDIS flails leathery limbs, batting wildly as her fingers harden in the heat from the blue fire, curing in odd curls and twists. The Flesh beneath her quivers in a last break toward the beach, as the Doctor takes a last backstep into the water, beckoning to the mummy with his outstretched arms, his silhouette resembling nothing so much as a willing sacrifice.

As Jack looks down at the beach, he sees the Doctor's shadow swallowed by a wave thrown by the writhing SHARDIS; the mummy disappears into the water as well, and a wail escapes the SHARDIS' lips as the salt water begins to erode her heated Flesh feet.


	24. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three: Fantastic Janet

The SHARDIS' body jerks to the right suddenly, as a sudden surge of sunlight pools over her left shoulder, and her fingers cease to claw the air, no longer ripping at her ruined throat and head. A whirlwind spins atop the fractured face. The blue fire wings recede into the remains of the throat, and a blue box grows from the shards of white neck, a strange tree, with six black and white windows, and a little light up top.

The TARDIS pokes from the superheated Flesh like a newly grown head, bursting from the melt- a surfacing buoy.

Bright light spills from the little light atop her blue hull, spinning in lighthouse blinks as she raises the SHARDIS' feet out from the water and the sea drips from her toes.

Her steps carry her to the shore, and she bends, sifting the water with the fingers of her one good arm.

The water swirls around her rotating wrist. Soon, soon, she pulls up again, and Jack watches as she rises to her full height, her hand clasped around something small and damp. And precious.

A cough sputters from her loose fist, and Jack laughs, his knees hitting sand.


	25. Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four: Bette Davis Lies

Rassilon leans over the claw foot tub and strokes the Flesh coated form of his wife, adjusting her wrist just so against the silver side, rubbing the fingers to bring the fires of life to the surface of her white skin.

"Soon, my love, soon," he crows, rolling up his sleeves and kneeling, "you and I will be together again, under this sky, our descendants' sky. And they will all kneel."

"No my love, they will not."

Her voice issues forth, surprising him.

Her fingers shift beneath his, snaking over his arm in entrapping vines, enveloping his shoulders, entwining his spine. Curving along the base of his strong neck.

"We are the Pythia, and you have stolen Our death from Us, Beloved," she sings, mimicking the chorus of the Flesh, "There will be repercussions, in the afterglow. But for now," she breathes, as alabaster tears flow down her marble cheeks, "The coin has been tossed into the sea, my love. Let us be together here. Now."

Her hand sinks into his chest. He gasps, coughing as blood pours down his throat and dribbles over his lips in a fine, thick red wine. As his life spills away, his surprised gaze melts into something resembling a smile, and his body relaxes.

Tircosieljarminyaebim looks up, her white eyes casting into the corners of the room.

"Come out, daughters," she calls, holding out a hand to the shadows, "I have something for you."


	26. Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five: Parthenogenesis Evangelion

Borusa and Clara look at each other from across the room.

Clara comes first, calling out a cautious "Who are you?"

Tircosieljarminyaebim smiles, her face a strange effigy of clean cotton and cold cream.

"You, my daughter, are to be given a gift. You, the other one, come here."

Borusa pushes off from the pillar she's hiding behind and asks, "… what is your business here? The Doctor told us this would happen, but… seeing you, this… what you've done… we need answers."

"Clara, Borusa," Tircosiel calls, the music of her words ringing slightly like a fond old bell, "Ask him yourself. My time here is done."

Her hands open on two rings, carved with roses and gleaming golden in the pale light of the moon overhead.

Each woman comes to claim a Rose Ring with careful doe steps, wary of betrayal from this creature of creatures at the center of so many intrigues.

She rests her hand above Rassilon's chest, and the big man melts into her, absorbed, like a pot of hot candy being stirred.

Together," she whispers, then she smiles at the women, and retreats back into the tub, a backwards wave of white chocolate.

"We'll, uh, we'll tell the Doctor you said hi!" Clara pipes up, staring down nervously at her ring and twisting it this way and that. "And don't forget to wri…"

She disappears.

Borusa shakes her head, then grabs her face and shakes her head again before touching the rose on her own ring and vanishing, too.


	27. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six: Odalisque and Obelisque

Again, the white pyramid. Floating through space. Time is different here, it pools and splits, creeps and soaks in valleys and binds its way around things no mortal would believe. And so it is, that on this particular day, the white pyramid floats by, having never seen Rassilon's face yet, just as it should be.

The pyramid sinks into a flow of solar wind and rides it, shoving off in a nimble go toward a strand of promising white stars in the distance.

The man inside blinks once or twice, and snuggles back into sleep, unaware of the stars, the pyramid. Being naked and alone.

Presently, the pyramid bumps against a giant bosom, two rises of taut white marblesque mammaries, candid and fair against the evening of the universe, the setting wink of so many stars, the eyes of the cosmos.

Two hands float down to catch the pyramid before it bounces, cupping, gentling, containing.

Again, he is held to a bosom he could appreciate, if only he were awake.


	28. Chapter 27

Epilogue: Tea and Oranges

The delightful scent of ginger beer pervades the console room.

It drips down the walls, slopping in the gears and circuitry somewhere.

His face is with her. His snores echo through her halls.

Her telepathic interface has been open for hours, cushioning his drool-dotted wrinkly face.

Her thief.

If she could giggle, still, oh, she might well do it.

The squishy bits of the interface smush slightly; he'll be waking up soon.

The TARDIS dims the lights.

He'll sleep a little longer, with her, maybe?

END.


End file.
